Share this post:

Okay, so we’re nearing the end of the extension given for the Retailer, Webcomics, Comics for Kids, and Gene Day Awards and if all goes as planned we’ll be announcing the nominations next week.

I would like to thank the many folks who have contacted me about being involved in the awards this year, I’ll be contacting you all shortly and we can begin planning for the ceremony and fundraising as soon as the nominations list goes public.

As usual, it should be stated that since these are awards with only 7 (sometimes 8) nominees per category, not everyone can be nominated for an award. Our committees have been narrowing down the lists to a smaller set of nominations (in some categories from hundreds of individual artists) and we know that inevitably some people will feel we neglected a creator, a book, or a store…

Congratulations to the winners of the Doug Wright Awards for 2014 (handed out as usual at TCAF in Mid-May) for non-mainstream, non-superhero comics:Best Book – Paul Joins the Scouts by Michel Rabagliati (Conundrum Press)
Spotlight aka “The Nipper” – Steven Gilbert for The Journal of the Main Street Secret Lodge
Pigskin Peters (non-narrative) – “Out of Skin” by Emily Carroll

So thanks to the few people who donated money to the awards, we appreciate your support and we are always in need of more assistance if you haven’t considered donating already!

We have been meeting and discussing plans going forward, as we do need to raise money in order to put on the 2014 awards, if we cannot raise the small amounts required to put on the awards we will not be able to do them, it’s as simple as that. On top of that, we need funds fairly urgently to reimburse us for the costs of the 2013 awards which we have already paid out of pocket for.

To that end we are exploring crowdfunding options whereby you get a perk for supporting the awards. We have a fair amount of original art and a lot of different prints left over from previous years that we can offer as perks, and many new pieces of original art have been offered to us by different creators, so we will probably expand on that with a wider appeal to the artistic community – so instead of selling pieces on eBay as we have in the past, they will be offered as perks in the crowdfunding campaign. We’re thinking of going with Indiegogo rather than Kickstarter in that Indiegogo allows you to keep whatever funds are raised even if your target is not reached.

One idea that we are exploring is creating sketchbooks of the Superman and Wolverine artwork from the two Visions of an Icon fundraising campaigns to offer as perks for certain donation plateaus. Printing these would be an additional cost we would have to absorb into the cost of the perks.

Our target is going to be two years funding, with anything beyond that allowing us to expand our print and promotional goals to promote nominated and award-winning books.

We are currently examining launch dates and planning the campaign. We’ll provide updates when we have some more concrete plans.

Share this post:

The Joe Shuster Awards recognizing Canadian Comic Book Creators is going into its 10th Anniversary.

It may well be its last.

Year to year the awards struggle to get by. This is generally by relying on the kind donations from creators in the industry. We auction the pieces for key funding.

We are quite thankful to all the volunteers who contribute to our committees and awards ceremony year after year. Also to sponsors that have stepped up for the cause. Without their involvement there would be no JSA Awards, period.

No one is making money on this folks.

We are a true non-profit organization and have operated as such from its inception.

The number one comment I hear from people is that “The JSA’s, don’t you get grants for that?” The answer is that the grants are out there but we need the help of volunteers that can interpret that world and assist us in completing effective proposals to secure them.

Hoping that the word can spread within the community and that any grant writers out there can give us some help.

In the meantime, if you’d like to help us out you can donate any amount via PayPal or Interac.

Much thanks to all.

Share this post:

The cost of putting on the annual Joe Shuster Awards for Canadian Comic Book Creators is currently assumed by the Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards Association, however since the awards are a not-for-profit organization we often find ourselves without funds to cover costs and must rely on fundraising to keep going.

While we (the directors) have been able to cover the costs from our personal accounts to ensure that the program endures, we must rely on donations of artwork and other promotional items to sell and your private donations to keep us going. We have considered doing elaborate crowdfunding projects, and that’s something we may do in the future, but now we are making a straightforward appeal for donations.

Share this post:

Joe Shuster, co-creator of Superman, was born on this day in 1914 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Shuster passed away in 1991 at the age of 78 — had he survived to this year, he would be 99 years old.

This is an important milestone year for Siegel and Shuster as it also marks the 75th Anniversary of their Superman character’s publication debut in 1938 (the idea had been kicked around in one form or another for many years before that).

To mark the occasion we are holding a birthday party/fundraiser at the Comic Book Lounge + Gallery in Toronto (587A College Street) with cake, a raffle, as well as guest creators sketching for fans for a donation to the awards, included nominee and past winner FRANCIS MANAPUL (The Flash).

The Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards Association is pleased to announce the venue of the 2013 Joe Shuster Awards Ceremony. The 8 2013 awards and 3 Hall of Fame presentations will be presented on SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 2013 at JACKMAN HALL at the Art Gallery of Ontario, starting at 8:30 PM.

Seating: 200 – priority seating for nominees, their family and friends and other industry professionals, with limited general admission seating.

The Art Gallery of Ontario – 317 Dundas Street West, Toronto, ON

The Art Gallery of Ontario is an art museum in Toronto’s Downtown Grange Park district, on Dundas Street West between McCaul Street and Beverley Street. Its collection includes more than 80,000 works spanning the 1st century to the present day.

Jackman Hall has it’s own entrance on McCaul Street, South of Dundas Street West (pictured above)

.About The Joe Shuster Awards

Established in 2004, The Joe Shuster Awards are Canada’s first national and bilingual award recognizing outstanding achievement in the creation of comic books, graphic novels and webcomics. The awards are named after pioneering Toronto-born artist Joe Shuster who, along with writer Jerry Siegel, created the iconic super-powered hero, Superman. The name is used with the approval of the Estate of Joe Shuster – Michael Catron, Estate Agent.

They need your help! There’s a campaign running at Indiegogo to get financing, and there’s only four days left to get them to their goal! It looks like it’ll be a fantastic book, so get on board and help this get made.

Share this post:

Salgood Sam’s Dream Life is one of my favorite webcomics, and he’s bringing it to print for the first time. His campaign is doing well, but he’s got some great exclusive rewards available, so I’d recommend checking it out to help hit some stretch goals.

Share this post:

Are you crafting your masterpiece? Have you made yours already, and are looking for some money to get you through your next? You should probably apply for a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Here’s the program description from the site:

The Grants for Professional Writers program covers subsistence, project and travel expenses. The Creative Writing Grants component gives Canadian authors (emerging, mid-career and established) time to write new literary works, including novels, short stories, poetry, children’s and young adults’ literature, graphic novels, exploratory writing and literary non-fiction.

Exploratory writing is writing that uses technology to present literature in an innovative manner and (or) explores forms of literature outside the conventions of the novel, short story or poem.

Can’t hurt to apply! Grants range from $3,000 to $25,000. Deadline is coming up on October 1, so get your pens a-wagglin’. Head to the Canada Council for the Arts website for more info.

A limited quantity of the book will be available for sale at tonight’s event, courtesy of Archaia Press.

Industry Night with Ramon Perez: A TALE OF SAND launch party!

Industry Night returns in 2012 with Ramon Perez and his hotly anticipated adaption of Jim Henson’s unfinished screenplay, A Tale of Sand. The TCW gallery will feature a vast selection of pages from the graphic novel juxtaposed with pages from Henson’s actual script. All of Ramon’s gorgeous A Tale of Sand artwork will be available for sale exclusively through this event and we invite you to drop by, pick up a copy of the book and say hello to Ramon!

Date: Wednesday, January 18

Time: 7 – 11 pm

Location: 587A College Street, Toronto (2nd Floor)

Admission: suggested donation of $4

Note: the proceeds from the admission will go towards covering event costs, with the remainder going towards the Joe Shuster Awards 2012 budget.

Share this post:

Two more days before Christmas, have you finished all of your Christmas shopping yet? I haven’t! I started wrapping some things this morning, so hopefully I’ll finish up all of the many little pre-Christmas errands tonight after work or early tomorrow morning before I start driving all around the GTA to various family events.

* I’d like to thank everyone that participated in the End of the Year Survey on Canadian Comics, we may still have some more, but there won’t be much more posted to the site until Tuesday next week. I think a lot of great points have been made, and it was great to catch up with some folks before we launch into 2012.

* We’ve got one more week of new books shipping next Wednesday before we close off the entries for eligible comics and graphic novels for the year and officially commence the nomination process for the awards.

* There are two days left in Darwyn Cooke’s Day 8 and 8.5 of his 12 Days of Christmas Auctions, he’s got some great Superman artwork and signed books available in each of the two auctions and the money will help us run the awards for 2012. He’s got many other great items available in the other auctions, and they are all for a great cause – the Hero Initiative.

* Next week the Boxing Day/Week sales commence, so why not check out your local comic book shop and see what they have on sale? Boxing Day and Week sales are big money makers for local comic book shops, and any sales they make may help make their holiday season a successful one. It’s been a tough year for independent retailers of all kinds, so let’s end the year on a positive note!

The Adventures of Tintin and his Taun Taun by Benjamin Rivers. My win from the "Toronto Draws Tintin" event. I'll definitely be checking out the Tintin movie over the break, anyone else?

I was really surprised and honoured to see that Darwyn devoted yesterday’s Day 8 of his 12 days of Christmas auctions to assist us with our fund-raising goals for 2012.The funds from the other amazing auctions he’s prepared go to benefit the Hero Initiative, a great charity that assists veteran comics creators in need of financial assistance but these two Superman-centric auctions go towards helping us meet our fundraising goals for 2012. They include:

1. Art by Darwyn Cooke 19 x 13, ink on Bristol.
This is a recreation of the most famous Shuster homage- the Neal Adams cover to Superman #233. This piece is blueline printed, roughly blue penciled and inked by Darwyn.

2. Art by Darwyn Cooke, 8/.5 x 11 blue pencil, pencil and ink on heavy bond paper
This is a design drawing of Superman from the Justice League: New Frontier animated movie

3. A copy of Superman: Kryptonite written by Darwyn Cooke and drawn by Tim Sale, signed by Darwyn.

Share this post:

Earlier in the month, Strange Adventures in Halifax held a special release party for Parker: The Martini Edition, even creating a unique Parker commemorative martini glass. Photos now online!

Darwyn has started his annual 12 Days of Christmas auctions to benefit the Hero Initiative. Some amazing pieces and packages were sold last year, so expect the same this year, and it’s all for a very worthy cause! DAY ONE, DAY TWO.

PS I received Darwyn’s response to the wrap survey today, so I’ll be formatting it and posting it here on Thursday.

Share this post:

I’m happy to report on behalf of the Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards Organization that we have agreed in principle with the organizers of the Montreal Comic Conand will be presenting the 8th Annual Joe Shuster Awards in conjunction with that event on the evening of Saturday, September 15, 2012.

In preparation for the ceremony, the CCBCAA will be working with members of the comics community to provide a fully bilingual awards ceremony, and we are all excited at the possibilities of providing better translation services on this site in order to help spread the word on comics and graphic novels by Canadians in both official languages.

The Montreal Comic Con will be held on the weekend of September 14-16, 2012. Due to unexpected demand, the MCC will be expanding to a full three days in 2012.

The MCC will also be changing facilities in 2012. It will no longer be held at Place Bonaventure but will be moving into the newer, larger and more colourful (!) convention facilities at the Palais des Congrès in Montreal, QC (pictured, right).

This marks the second time that the Joe Shuster Awards will be presented outside of Toronto. Earlier this year we presented the 7th Annual Awards at the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo. Plans are for the JSAs to be presented in conjunction with a different comic book convention in Canada each year.

Last Friday, September 30 as part of the DC Art Masters tour, The Toronto Cartoonists Workshop held another Industry Night event spotlighting Francis Manapul and to celebrate the release of The Flash #1, part of DC’s New 52. We took a lot of photos for you to enjoy! Continue reading →

Share this post:

Last night, at the Toronto Cartoonists Workshop at 587A College Street, the TCW, Guerilla Printing, All New Comics and the Joe Shuster Awards held a launch party and art show event for two Toronto-based creators: Andy Belanger (for Kill Shakespeare 12 – which unfortunately has been delayed to an August 23rd release date) and J. Bone for DC Retro-Active: Wonder Woman – The 70’s #1.

The night started out, interestingly enough, by our group passing renowned cartoonist Seth and his wife on College Street on our way into the school/gallery space. Seth didn’t attend the event, but it was a surprise to see him and it seemed an interesting start to what ended up being a great night for comics in Toronto.

The TCW’s Eden Bachelder and Kellam Templeton-Smith had already framed and hung the 53 pieces submitted by Andy and J. for display, with the entire issue of J.’s Wonder Woman issue on the East wall, and an assortment of pieces from Kill Shakespeare and other work by Andy along the West wall. Attendees were greeted by the absolutely stunning (and massive!) original art by Andy for the cover of Kill Shakespeare #12 as they came in.

Between 7 and 11 the place was packed with fans, art lovers, a few retailers and a number of comics professionals — a true industry night!

J. Bone (centre)

J. had even prepared some new limited prints for the evening featuring Wonder Woman, one of which was a redo of the cover for DC Retroactive Wonder Woman #, but done in J’s on style instead of the Mike Sekowski homage style he was asked to apply to the published comic. The other print – Wonder Woman soaring with an eagle was another stunner. I would personally LOVE to see more Wonder Woman comics done by J. Bone in this style. Who’s with me on this? Maybe we can put some pressure on DC’s Eddie Berganza, Bob Harras and Dan Didio when we see them here in a couple of weeks for Fan Expo Canada! Here’s a closer look at that cover recreation – great job on the colouring as well J.!:

Andy Belanger (right) and a friend

Over at Andy’s table he had a selection of issues of Kill Shakespeare and other comics he had worked on, including the first trade paperback collection. He also had a couple of great prints for sale, one a silk screen print featuring the art from that Kill Shakespeare 12 cover, as well as one of an amazing collaboration he did with another talented Toronto-based artist – Michael Cho.

I saw the piece originally on display in Calgary, and surprisingly it did not sell there. I am happy to report that it has found a home — my apartment. Here’s a closer look at that piece:

It was quite the crowd and I was really impressed with the installation and the overall atmosphere was very laid back and a lot of fun. The free beer certainly helped! Event sponsor Guerilla Printing also had a table, run by Darwin Santos and Tyrone McCarthy:We are happy to report that we had over 100 visitors and we raised 340 dollars in admission fees for the 2012 Joe Shuster Awards budget. People were very generous!

Some crowd shots:See you in late September at our next Industry Night event – The launch party for THE FLASH #1 by Francis Manapul!

From left to right: Peter Fisico (All New Comics), Francis Manapul, Marcus To and Jason Truong

Share this post:

In it’s second year, Sketches for Pledges will feature a group of talented artists aiming to raise funds and awareness by sketching original artworks for SickKids hospital on behalf of Royal Bank of Canada.

Come by and take a chance of winning artworks from some of the guest artists as well as a special edition Street Fighter Chun Li bust (courtesy of David Hennig of gr8collectables) and a couple of RBC Arbie Plush dolls (courtesy of Martin Teasdale of RBC)

Share this post:

13 Canadian creators have contributed to Panels for Primates, an online charity anthology that ends its run on June 1st.

SO, WHAT THE HECK IS PANELS FOR PRIMATES?

Panels for Primates is an ongoing, online charity anthology of primate comics that has been updating every Wednesday with new material at ACT-I-VATE (http://act-i-vate.com) since October of last year, all to benefit the Primate Rescue Center in Nicholasville, KY. Like the other content on the ACT-I-VATE webcomics site, the ever-growing Panels for Primates archive can be viewed absolutely free. The big difference is that Panels for Primates readers are encouraged to swing over to http://www.primaterescue.org/ and make a donation. Panels for Primates will finish its online run on June 1st, but a story by the final Canadian creator got posted this week.

HOW INTERNATIONAL IS IT?

The project features work by creators from Canada, the U.S., Israel, Britain, Mexico, Germany, and Indonesia.

Share this post:

Post navigation

About Us

Comic books, like Jazz, are a North American invention that has been embraced all over the globe --- and from the Platinum Age to the present, Canadian artists, writers and cartoonists have been shaping it along the way.

The Joe Shuster Awards celebrate Canadians who create comics at home or abroad. They are named after Joe Shuster, the Canadian artist that co-created a character that has had tremendous impact on the industry and the world.

The Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards Association seeks to identify and provide FREE resources on the who, what, when and where of Canadians working in comics, selling comics, and celebrating comics.

What if a Canadian Creator Moves Away? Joe Shuster, Hal Foster – are they really Canadian?

Is Superman Canadian? Our position.

Taking us beyond the New Frontier: Darwyn Cooke (1962-2016)

Positive Spirit and Determination: Debra Jane Shelly (1974-2014)

Jerry Robinson (1922-2011)

Thank you, Jerry. We will miss you.

2014 Winners were announced on September, 2014 in Toronto (click image to see results)

2014 Winners Announced in Toronto

2013 Winners were announced on August 24, 2013 in Toronto (click image to see results)

2012 WINNERS ANNOUNCED ON 9/15/2012 IN MONTREAL (CLICK ON THE IMAGE FOR DETAILS)

2011 WINNERS ANNOUNCED ON 6/18/2011 IN CALGARY (CLICK ON THE IMAGE FOR DETAILS)